Beeban Kidron Quotes

The movie industry has collapsed into two types of film - the $100 million blockbuster or the small independent film of $1 million or less - and the huge middle ground has been lost. Cable is filling that void.

When I went to Sundance back in 1998, indie film was all the rage, and Miramax was throwing down five or six million dollars for several films each year. Those were the salad days of indie film, and those days are over. I'm not out there worrying too much about it.

'Brothers McMullen' would not be picked up for theatrical distribution now.

I'm excited that 'The Good Guy' is getting distribution because indie movies they're not - people ran out of money and they're not making these movies anymore. It's all superhero movies or real obvious tent pole studio films.

I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.

Original movies of any size are an endangered species.

The good thing about feature films is that the budgets tend to scale.

After 'The Gamekeeper' I made one other film called 'Looks and Smiles,' but making British films was very difficult. There wasn't a tradition of British cinema.

Even with a big budget, you can make a niche film.

As far as acting in films, there is not much out there that is very interesting to do. The ones that are interesting to me are independent films and they have trouble raising money. With people putting their money into blockbusters, there is not much left for the independents.

It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.

There are two types of films - one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.

Big feature films are another world.

I wish I could sit back and say, 'Oh, I'm gonna wait for a Merchant-Ivory film to come my way. Or Ivory-Merchant. Whatever it's called. But you just take what's given and then, hopefully, down the road you can be more choosy and only do, say, Wayans brothers movies. That's my goal: to be more Merchant-Ivory-Wayans.

During the '90s, a lot of us in the indie film world were not making our money off our movies. We were screenwriters doing scripts for hire for studios.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.

Scripts don't get movies made.

You know, the people who do indie film and decide who gets those little budgets? They're mean, man. They're cold and very cool-oriented.

But what's interesting is now - and not only in horror, but across the board - the studios basically only make B pictures with A budgets. That's the biggest difference.

When I tried to get 'Stargate' made, I took it to every studio in Hollywood and every studio said, 'Sci-fi is dead. It's a dead genre. No one wants to see science fiction anymore.' And I had to go and raise the money independently to make that movie.

I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.

I love to watch low-budget indie artsy films, but I do also love the big blockbuster things. I would love to do that one day, do a Marvel film. That would be really great.

The gritty indie films are a lot rarer than the films that aspire to fill multiplexes.

There will always be big companies making big movies. But making film and distribution is changing in front of our eyes. I'm not sure what the future holds for this industry.